Being poor is stressful, but the pursuit of wealth can be even more stressful. Activities such as beating deadlines, meeting sales goals, driving traffic, pursuing customers and trying to top last year’s metrics can leave a person feeling frustrated, stressed out and burned out. In turn, all the stress can have a vastly negative effect on a person’s health.
There is no point in destroying your health while pursuing wealth, especially if it means you will have to spend all the wealth you earn on things that will help you regain your health again in the long run. A smarter approach: Slow down your pace, design a stress-free life, and find ways to improve your health while saving your wealth at the same time.
1. Improve Your Work-Life Balance
If you can, choose a career that allows for a healthy amount of work-life balance. No matter what career path you’re following, you can find ways to be more productive when you’re at work so you can spend less time working:
- Keep a to-do list; prioritize your daily tasks on the list in order of importance, and complete the most important tasks first.
- Delegate more.
- Refuse to do unproductive “busy work”.
- Don’t spend all your time working.
- Take breaks from time to time.
2. Learn to Prepare Healthy and Delicious Meals at Home from Scratch
Restaurant food isn’t doing your health any favors, and it’s also expensive compared to cooking your own meals. Eating out can expose you to toxic chemicals, including phthalates and other endocrine disruptors, that are frequently present in restaurant food.
Processed, packaged grocery store food can also contain harmful chemicals and pesticide residues. The healthiest solution is to buy organic food that is produced without the addition of pesticides and harmful synthetic additives such as chemical preservatives. Then use the organic food to prepare healthy meals at home.
3. Drink Filtered Water From Your Tap
Bottled water is expensive. Recent studies have revealed that bottled water is also typically contaminated with fragments of microplastic. These plastic fragments are just as unhealthy as any of the other contaminants typically found in tap water. A smarter approach: Filter your tap water using a filtration device such as a charcoal filter or reverse osmosis filter. You’ll save money and preserve your health, too.
4. Choose the Most Appropriate Health Insurance Plan for Your Current Circumstances
It’s possible that you might be overspending on your current health insurance plan. While health insurance is not something you ever want to skimp on, it’s also important to determine if you are overpaying for options you don’t need and will never use. If you’re a young woman thinking of starting a family soon, you’ll want to ensure that you have adequate coverage for pregnancy and postnatal care. However, if you’re an older woman who’s past menopause, it doesn’t make sense to continue paying for those options.
- Check for redundancies between your health insurance plan and your car insurance plan; there’s no need to pay twice for the same coverage.
- Compare health insurance plans to choose the most affordable coverage that is sufficient for your needs.
- Switch plans if you find that you’re paying for health insurance coverage you no longer need.
Taking these actions will allow you to preserve as much of your wealth as possible while still ensuring you’ll have access to excellent healthcare in case of future emergencies.